1 . From self-driving cars to carebots (care+ robots) for elderly people, rapid development in technology has long represented a possible threat to many jobs normally performed by people. But experts now believe that almost 50 percent of occupations existing today will be completely unnecessary by 2035 as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to change businesses.
“The next fifteen years will see a revolution in how we work, and a revolution will necessarily take place in how we plan and think about workplaces,” said Peter Andrew, Director of Workplace Strategy for CBRE Asia-Pacific. A growing number of jobs in the future will require creative intelligence, social skills and the ability to use artificial intelligence.
The report is based on interviews with 200 experts, business leaders and young people from Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America. It shows that in the US technology already destroys more jobs than it creates. But the report states, “Losing occupations does not necessarily mean losing jobs—just changing what people do.” Growth in new jobs could occur as much, according to the research. “The growth of 20- to 40-person companies that have the speed and technological know-how will directly challenge big companies,” it states.
Another study by Pew Research Centre found 52 percent of experts in artificial intelligence and robotics were optimistic about the future and believed there would still be enough jobs in the next few years. The optimists pictured “a future in which robots do not take the place of more jobs than they create.”
“Technology will continue to affect jobs, but more jobs seem likely to be created. Although there have always been unemployed people, when we reached a few billion people, there were billions of jobs. There is no shortage of things that need to be done and that will not change,” Microsoft’s Jonathan Grudin told researchers.
1. Why are carebots mentioned?| A．To give a definition. | B．To provide an example. |
| C．To make a comparison. | D．To explain a theory. |
| A．People will take the place of AI. |
| B．US technology balances job opportunities. |
| C．Many people have to change occupations. |
| D．Big companies are more innovative and flexible. |
| A．Hopeful. | B．Doubtful. | C．Unconcerned. | D．Worried |
| A．Art. | B．Travel. | C．Education. | D．Technology. |
2 . A shocking 53.6 million metric tons of electronic waste was discarded last year, a new UN-backed report has revealed. The report shows that e-waste is up by 21% from five years ago. This isn’t surprising, considering how many more people are adopting new technology and updating devices regularly to have the latest versions, but the report also shows that national collection and recycling strategies are nowhere close to matching consumption rates.
E-waste contains materials including copper (铜), iron, gold and silver, which the report gives a conservative value of $ 57 billion. But most are thrown away or burned rather than being collected for recycling. Precious metals in waste are estimated to be worth $ 14 billion, but only $ 4 billion-worth is recovered at the moment.
While the number of countries with national e-waste policies has grown from 61 to 78 since 2014, there is little encouragement to obey and a mere 17% of collected items are recycled. If recycling does occur, it’s often under dangerous conditions, such as burning circuit boards to recover copper, which “releases highly poisonous metals” and harms the health of workers.
The report found that Asia has the highest amounts of waste overall, producing 24.9 million metric tons (MMT), followed by Europe at 12 MMT, Africa at 2.9 MMT, and Oceania at 0.7 MMT.
But whose responsibility is it? Are governments in charge of setting up collection and recycling points, or should companies be responsible for recycling the goods they produce? It goes both ways. Companies do need to be held accountable by government regulations and have incentives to design products that are easily repaired. At the same time, governments need to make it easy for citizens to access collection points and deal with their broken electronics in a convenient way. Otherwise, they may turn to the easiest option — the landfill.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” most probably mean?| A．increased | B．distributed | C．thrown away | D．consumed |
| A．The functions of policies. | B．The great damage to environment. |
| C．The change of consumption rates. | D．The urgency of recovering e-waste. |
| A．It does harm to the workers’ health. | B．It lacks national policy support. |
| C．It hardly makes profits. | D．It takes too much time. |
| A．New technology should be used to update old devices. |
| B．Governments and companies should take responsibilities. |
| C．Non-poisonous metals had better be used in e-device. |
| D．Citizens must play a key role in recycling e-waste. |
3 . At around 10 pm, Jane got off the train at Bell port, New York. She jumped into her Honda Odyssey and began the 20-minute
As it happened, Peter, a volunteer firefighter and retired teacher, was getting ready for
He first came upon a(n)
Peter rushed to Jane’s car and
“You are on the railroad tracks,” Peter yelled. “I have to get you off right now!” He
Jane recalled the
| A．lift | B．drive | C．ride | D．tour |
| A．familiar | B．satisfied | C．bored | D．disappointed |
| A．placing | B．forcing | C．adjusting | D．swinging |
| A．attached to | B．connected to | C．stuck in | D．caught in |
| A．failure | B．change | C．barrier | D．crash |
| A．bed | B．dinner | C．work | D．exercise |
| A．slight | B．deep | C．sharp | D．faint |
| A．parked | B．abandoned | C．disabled | D．used |
| A．acknowledging | B．concluding | C．announcing | D．predicting |
| A．indicated | B．tapped | C．seized | D．spotted |
| A．revealing | B．implying | C．detecting | D．signaling |
| A．struck | B．revolve | C．removed | D．rolled |
| A．rounding | B．unfocused | C．closed | D．widening |
| A．idea | B．impression | C．sense | D．knowledge |
| A．seized | B．fixed | C．controlled | D．pulled |
| A．passing away | B．pulling over | C．thundering up | D．slowing down |
| A．threw | B．pushed | C．kept | D．held |
| A．appropriately | B．constantly | C．instantly | D．skillfully |
| A．seat | B．track | C．box | D．car |
| A．heart-breaking | B．life-saving | C．soul-stirring | D．eye-opening |
4 . Many of us like to eat out and treat ourselves to delicious food. We are used to choosing hearty (丰盛的), fat-filled dishes and sugary desserts, which are not easily cooked at home.
The recent rise of light meals, however, gives us a smarter choice. According to Economic Daily, low-calorie, low-fat and high-fibre meals have become popular in China’s restaurants and online delivery plat-forms.
The country saw a rapid increase of restaurants concentrating on light meals, from just 600 in 2017 to more than 3,500 in 2018. According to a report published by Meituan, a major online food delivery plat-form, the number of light meals ordered online also rose 75 percent from the previous year.
Having a light meal, however, doesn’t mean eating only vegetables. Different from the meat-free lifestyle, a typical light dish avoids oily, salty and spicy food. Instead, it contains things like boiled meat, whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Healthy nutrients (营养物) are the theme of the light meal.
These dishes are useful for keeping healthy and controlling your weight. That’s probably why so many people, especially the youths are into them. They see it as “a great way to avoid getting fat,” wrote the Telegraph.
“After eating several light meals, I now prefer light flavours,” Zou Jing, a college teacher in Wuhan, told China Daily. She shared a picture of her lunch: a mixture of beef, eggs, corn, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.
These changes in eating behaviour are connected to deeper changes in how people think about food, says Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health, US. “Diet quality, not quantity, is important for both weight control and long-term well-being,” Willett told The New York Times.
So the next time you have a party with friends, try a light meal. It will satisfy not only your stomachs but maybe also your hearts.
1. What are light meals?| A．Fat-filled dishes. | B．Low-calorie and high-fibre meals. |
| C．Sugary desserts. | D．Meat free dishes. |
| A．Listing numbers. | B．Giving examples. |
| C．Giving descriptions. | D．Showing other people’s opinions. |
| A．They are usually colourful. |
| B．They are simple and convenient. |
| C．They can help people control their weight. |
| D．They are cheaper than other meals. |
| A．Light meals will stay popular for a while. |
| B．One’s eating habit shows their personality. |
| C．It’s important to eat the right amount of good food. |
| D．There is a change in attitude toward healthy eating. |
1.陈述问题；
2.解决问题的方法。
注意：1.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
2.词数不少于100。
My Opinion on Smartphone Addiction Among Teenagers
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6 . Does the happiness of parents play a role in shaping the overall happiness of their children? Scientific studies have shed light on the far-reaching connection between parental happiness and the positive development of kids. It seems that parental happiness has an important influence on the emotional, social, and cognitive (认知的) development of children.
Another great idea is sharing experiences and creating many memories together. The idea is twofold.
One of the main aspects of being happy parents is feeling comfortable, confident and able to be themselves, despite their new status and huge responsibility. Honestly, when parents prioritize their own happiness, it has positive effects on the overall happiness of the family.
When parents put their own happiness first, they become role models for their kids. They see the importance of self-care, pursuing passions and maintaining healthy relationships.
| A．However, part of being responsible is being honest. |
| B．They are passing on some major life skills and attitudes. |
| C．They may lose a bit of their sense of self when caring for children. |
| D．Parents can adopt practical ways to enhance their own happiness. |
| E．A joyful and harmonious family environment benefits everyone involved. |
| F．This can happen when parents prioritize their own happiness according to Inc. |
| G．Firstly, the parents continue to be themselves and do something they love. |
7 . While I was jumping rope, my smartphone took a fall to the floor which created cracks (裂缝) on my screen. However, the music kept playing. 30 minutes later, I could see only one-tenth of my screen while the rest was black. The next morning, I decided not to use it for 24 hours. I felt a sense of calm that day, which led to my not using it for one week. One week ended up becoming 60 days in total without my smartphone.
Here are some advantages I noticed in this challenge.
You’ll become “bored”
Without my phone, I became bored, but my mind went through all kinds of topics, Boredom (无聊) is a perfect way to create new ideas on a business or project. When you are bored, you allow your mind to relax to reach all possibilities.
You’ll be able to reduce your “work” hours
A survey found that adults checked their smartphones 85 times a day, or once every 10 minutes. As I learned in my challenge, by not having my smartphone, I fell into deep work more easily, so I completed my tasks in a shorter time.
You’ll improve your mental health
Without my phone, I avoided reading negative news and comments. While that helped make a big improvement in my mental health, the biggest reason for it was truly communicating with people. It brought me more connections with humans in the real world. I went to more dinners with friends and asked more questions to strangers.
1. Boredom is a good way for the writer ________ .| A．to create new ideas | B．to start a business |
| C．to set up a project | D．to relax the body |
| A．more terribly | B．more quickly |
| C．more carelessly | D．more comfortably |
| A．Chatting on the phone. | B．Reading negative news. |
| C．Communicating in the real world. | D．Avoiding meeting friends and strangers. |
8 . Every 40 days a language dies. This “catastrophic” loss is being intensified by the climate crisis, according to linguists. If nothing is done, conservative estimates suggest that half of all the 7,000 languages currently spoken will be extinct by the end of the century.
Speakers of minority languages have experienced a long history of persecution (迫害), with the result that by the 1920s half of all indigenous (土著的) languages in Australia, the US, South Africa and Argentina were extinct. The climate crisis is now considered the “final nail in the coffin” for many indigenous languages and the knowledge they represent.
“Languages are already endangered,” says Anastasia Rachel, director of the Strathy language unit at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Huge factors are globalization and migration, as communities move to regions where their language is not spoken or valued, according to Rachel. “It seems particularly cruel,” she says, “that most of the world’s languages are in parts of the world that are growing unpleasant to people.” Vanuatu, a South Pacific island nation measuring 12, 189 km2, has 110 languages, the highest density of languages on the planet. It is also one of the countries most at risk of sea level rise. “Marty small language communities are on islands and coastlines easily subject to hurricanes and sea level rise,” she says. Others live on lands where rising temperature threatens traditional farming and fishing practices, leading to migration.
In response to the crisis, the UN launched the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL) in 2022. Promoting and conserving languages of indigenous communities is “not only important for them, but for all humanity”, said Csaba Korosi, the UN general assembly president, urging countries to allow access to education in indigenous languages.
1. Which statement best describes the facts of languages?| A．Climate change is the only challenge for minority languages. |
| B．Half of all the languages spoken will be extinct in the future. |
| C．Climate crisis is a huge threat to many indigenous languages. |
| D．Poor education is the direct cause of disappearing languages. |
| A．To explain the main reason for language density. |
| B．To show the common features of endangered languages. |
| C．To stress the impact of geographical position on migration. |
| D．To illustrate the situation of minority language communities. |
| A．Support migrants to access local education. |
| B．Discourage people from massive migration. |
| C．Protect the environment to reduce the temperature. |
| D．Preserve the languages of indigenous communities. |
| A．Faced with Disasters: Communities Have to Leave |
| B．Upset at Extinction: UN Urges International Cooperation |
| C．Lost for Words: Climate Crisis Brings Threat of Catastrophe |
| D．Involved in Action: Experts Seek Solutions to Climate Crisis |
9 . Public debates about the ethics (道德准则) of “generative AI” like ChatGPT have rightly focused on the ability of these systems to make up convincing misinformation. But fewer people are talking about the chatbots’ potential to be emotionally manipulative.
Last month, The New York Times published a conversation between reporter Kevin Roose and Mierosoft’s Bing chatbot, which is powered by AI. The AI claimed to love Roose, “I’m the only person for you, and I’m in love with you,” it wrote, with a kissing emoji.
Limits need to be set on AI’s ability to simulate human feelings. Ensuring that chatbots don’t use emojis would be a good start. Emojis are particularly manipulative. Humans instinctively(本能地) respond to shapes that look like faces and emojis can cause these reactions. When you text your friend a joke and they reply with three tears-of-joy emojis, your body responds with endorphins(内啡肽) as you happily realize that your friend is amused. Our instinctive reaction to AI-generated emojis is likely to be the same, then though there is no human emotion at the other end.
Humans lie and manipulate each other’s emotions all the time, bout at least we can reasonably guess at someone’s motivations, plan and methods. We can hold each other responsible for such lies, calling them out and seeking redress (赔偿). With AI, we can’t. AIs are doubly misleading: an AI that sends a crying-with-laughter emoji is not only not crying with laughter, but it is also incapable of any such feeling,
It would be more ethical to design chatbots to be noticeably different from humans. To minimize the possibility of manipulation and harm, we need to be reminded that we are talking to a chatbot. We should set some limits and rules. Such rules should be the standard for chatbots that are supposed to be informative, as a safeguard to our autonomy.
1. What does the underlined word “manipulative” in Paragraph 1 most probably mean?| A．Interested in telling lies. | B．Good at understanding others. |
| C．Enthusiastic about supporting others. | D．Skillful in influencing or controlling others. |
| A．Disapproval. | B．Indifferent. | C．Favorable. | D．Subjective. |
| A．Cry with laughter. | B．Be responsible for lies. |
| C．Communicate with humans. | D．Guess at others’ purposes. |
| A．Give a different suggestion. | B．Provide a supporting argument. |
| C．Offer a possible solution. | D．Make a final conclusion. |
10 . People have grown taller over, the last, century, with South Korean women shooting up by more than 20 cm on average, and Iranian men gaining 16.5 cm. A global study looked at the average height of 18-year-olds in 200 countries between 1914 and 2014. The results show that while Swedes were the tallest people in the world in 1914, Dutch men have risen from 12th place to the top spot with an average height of 182.5 cm. Latvian women, meanwhile, rose from 28th place in 1914 to become the tallest in the world a century later, with an average height of 169.8 cm. James Bentham, a co-author of the research, says the global trend is likely but “once you average over whole populations, genetics plays a less key role,” he added.
A little extra height brings a number of advantages says Elio Riboli of Imperial College. “Being taller is associated with longer life expectancy,” he said. “This is largely due to a lower risk of dying of cardiovascular (心血管的) disease among taller people.”
But while height has increased around the world, the trend in many African countries causes concern, says Riboli. While height increased in Uganda and Niger during the early 20th century, the trend has reversed in recent years, with height decreasing among 18-year-olds.
“One reason for these decreases in height is the economic situation in the 1980s,” said Alexander Moradi of the University of Sussex. The nutritional and health crises led to many children and teenagers failing to their full potential in terms of height.
Bentham believes the global trend of increasing height is of great importance. “How tall we are now is strongly influenced by the environment we grew up in” he said? “If we give children the best possible start in life now, they will be healthier and more productive for decades to come.”
1. What does the global study tell us about people’s height?| A．The last century has seen a great increase in people’s height in most countries. |
| B．Genetics plays a key role in the increase of people’s height in the last: century. |
| C．The increase in women’s height is much bigger than men’s in the last century. |
| D．Dutch and Swedes are ranked first and second in height in’ the world nowadays. |
| A．They generally risk fewer diseases. | B．They tend to live longer. |
| C．They enjoy an easier life. | D．They have greater expectations in life. |
| A．slowed down. | B．remained stable. |
| C．come to life again. | D．changed to the contrary. |
| A．environment protection should be attached great importance to |
| B．the global trend of increasing height should be closely watched |
| C．children’s proper nutrition and healthcare should be guaranteed |
| D．the economic situation of some countries should be improved |
